The Bee Gees in concert from 1968 to get you up and rolling, this day after Thanksgiving. Not the Disco era Bee Gees but further back towards the beginning when they were successfully cranking out a string of Pop hits leaning in the direction of Psychedelia.
Though solidly positioned in the Top-40 charts and gathering mass appeal worldwide, direction changes were afoot and sometimes at odds. While The Bee Gees were heading in the direction of going the Procol Harum route (who actually supported them during this 1968 tour) with the double-album Odessa, there were also hints at heading in the R&B direction which would eventually morph into Disco by the mid-1970s.
Most people today think of The Bee Gees and immediately head to Saturday Night Fever, but those who went further back associate them with New York Mining Disaster: 1941, which was an enormous hit in the U.S.
This particular performance, recorded on March 3, 1968 at the Stadthalle in Berne was notable, as their Wikipedia page put it:
On 27 February 1968, The Bee Gees, backed by the 17-piece Massachusetts String Orchestra, began their first tour of Germany with two concerts at Hamburg Musikhalle. In March 1968, the band was supported by Procol Harum (who had a hit “A Whiter Shade of Pale”) on their German tour. As Robin’s partner Molly Hullis recalls: “Germans were wilder than the fans in England at the heights of Beatlemania.” The tour schedule took them to 11 venues in as many days with 18 concerts played, finishing with a brace of shows at the Stadthalle, Braunschweig.
After that, the group was off to Switzerland. As Maurice described it:
“There were over 5,000 kids at the airport in Zurich. The entire ride to Bern, the kids were waving Union Jacks. When we got to the hotel, the police weren’t there to meet us and the kids crushed the car. We were inside and the windows were all getting smashed in, and we were on the floor.”
On 17 March, the band performed “Words” on The Ed Sullivan Show. The other artists who performed on that night’s show were Lucille Ball, George Hamilton and Fran Jeffries. On 27 March 1968, the band performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
If you’re not familiar with “that period” of the Bee Gees career, introduce yourself and dive in – sound is good but the mix bounces around, it was the 60s after all.
Holiday weekend . . .enjoy the show.
